ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, September 15, 1996 TAG: 9609140005
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: THE BACK PEW
SOURCE: CODY LOWE
We use that old cliche about it being a small world so often that it's a wonder we're surprised by meeting unexpected people in unexpected places any more.
But we are. At least, I am.
Just last weekend I was standing in an orchard in Bedford County, interviewing Kay Smith as she and some fellow members of Roanoke's Greene Memorial United Methodist Church in Roanoke picked up surplus apples to distribute to the poor.
Smith just happened to mention that she grew up in Bristol, where she had been a member of First Baptist Church.
I remembered that was where my Great-aunt Vic and Uncle Bob Laws had gone to church. Perhaps Smith would remember them?
Sure enough, she had known them well, spent time in their home, seen them Sunday after Sunday in church, felt their influence in the community.
The interview turned off onto a tangent stretching back 30 or 40 years, as we remembered the couple and how their lives influenced our own.
On the surface, Uncle Bob - who was known as "Jim" to his neighbors in Bristol - and Aunt Vic might have appeared to be an unlikely pair.
Uncle Bob, born about the turn of the century, was a properly strait-laced gentleman of the old school. I don't recall seeing him without a tie on. He grew up in a rural area of western North Carolina where he would have had relatively little exposure to the wide world. He was an excellent salesman with a serious, businesslike demeanor - though he had a way with my cousins and me that endeared him to us.
Aunt Vic, on the other hand, was positively bubbly. Vivacious. Outgoing. As cosmopolitan as one can be in Bristol. Born in England, she was the child of missionaries and had grown up in Argentina. Throughout her life she spoke Spanish as easily as English, since she had learned it as a native language as a child. Later in life, she would occasionally visit a sister who lived in Rio de Janeiro and send us photos of their lying on the beach together at Christmas. She was downright exotic.
What Uncle Bob and Aunt Vic had in common was that they were devoted to each other, to their families and to their church.
As Kay Smith and I reminisced about the Laws in that Bedford orchard, I was reminded that we cannot tell how deep and long will be the influence of our lives on others.
While some couples who don't have children never become good at interacting with tykes and teen-agers, that wasn't true of Aunt Vic and Uncle Bob. They liked being around young people - from kids to college students. They taught us games that grown-ups played - even cards - and they never, ever talked down to us. Every conversation was as if to an equal. It was intoxicating.
Among Aunt Vic's many jobs throughout her life, she worked as a recruiter for Southern Baptist-affiliated Virginia Intermont College. And she took an abiding interest in that school's students.
Smith reminded me that my aunt and uncle practically adopted Virginia Intermont's international students - in part, perhaps, because of Aunt Vic's experience when she came to this country as a girl to go to college. Her parents were committed to their mission in South America, but they wanted their three girls to get their educations in the United States.
Not forgetting the hospitality of others to her, Aunt Vic and Uncle Bob opened their house - and their hearts - to students from other lands who needed a home away from home.
They opened it to neighbors like Kay Smith. They opened it to nieces and nephews who loved them as dearly as they loved their grandparents.
As Kay Smith and I talked about that grand old couple, I couldn't help but wonder at how strong and alive their spirits continue to be though they are long buried.
Uncle Bob has been dead more than 30 years; Aunt Vic for a decade. But their influence continues to be felt in the far-away lives and hearts of at least two strangers who got acquainted in an off-the-track apple orchard.
So often, most of us think about the legacies of our lives residing primarily in our children. They are the ones we think will carry our lessons of love and faith and family into the future.
But, as Aunt Vic and Uncle Bob bear witness, the example of any one of us may be more important, more far-reaching - and last far longer - than we can imagine.
It may not be eternal life - but having one's name and life remembered so well for so long may be the next best thing.
LENGTH: Medium: 82 linesby CNB